On our homepage today, we’ve published a piece by John Bolton from the current issue — a piece on the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize. I have a piece of my own on this subject, published on the website of The American Interest.

The prize went to a little-known group in The Hague: the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. The world at large was rooting for another winner, 16-year-old Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani heroine who campaigns for the rights of girls and women in her country. She was shot up by the Taliban last year — and has persevered. She received a very nice award: the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, given by the European Parliament. But she did not get the Nobel.

Toward the end of my piece, I say something a bit surprising (and it was a bit surprising even to me):

In a way, I admire the Norwegian Nobel Committee for passing over Malala Yousafzai and giving the award to the OPCW. Committee members undoubtedly knew that Malala would be a wildly popular choice. They also knew that the public would be disappointed in the award to the dull, faceless OPCW. But they went ahead and anointed the OPCW anyway, for classic Nobel reasons.

Anyway, give the ambassador’s piece and mine a try, if you like. (And Happy Halloween! I hear some ghosts and goblins outside my window even now — trick-or-treaters, I mean.)